The Press: Un-Digest-ed

UnDigested

The small, smart New Yorker (arc. 205,000) last week cast a stone at the famed, fabulously successful Reader's Digest (domestic circ. 8,000,000). The missile at once set up widening ripples in the U.S. publishing pond. The New Yorker's irascible, bristle-topped Editor Harold W. Ross (and his co-editors) sent a bristling letter to contributors, told them that the New Yorker would no longer allow the Digest to reprint any New Yorker material. Reasons:

"The Digest started out as a reprint magazine, but grew into something quite different. Nowadays a large proportion of its contents is frankly original with the Digest and not presented as reprint material; and of the stuff that is presented as reprint material, much actually originates in the office of the Digest and then gets farmed out to some other magazine for first publication. The effect of this (apart from spreading a lot of money around) is that the Digest is beginning to generate a considerable fraction of the contents of American magazines. This gives us the creeps, as does any centralization of Genius. The fact seems to be that some publications are already as good as subsidized by the Digest. . . . We believe it should not operate through other publications to keep alive the reprint myth.... We were willing to be digested, but we are not willing to be first supplied, then digested.

"The New Yorker, furthermore, has never been particularly impressed with the Digest's capsule theory of life and its assumption that any piece of writing can be improved by extracting every seventh word, like a tooth. We have occasionally been embarrassed to see our stuff after it has undergone alterations. . . . Mostly, however, we object to the Digest's indirect creative function, which is a threat to the free flow of ideas and to the independent spirit."

If "subsidized" and "myth of reprint" were horrid words to his ears, the Digest's tall, balding DeWitt Wallace (with his wife, co-editor and co-owner) gave no sign of it. Said he: "The unusual growth of the Digest in the past ten years has been due in no small degree to the opposition, from time to time, of various magazines. It has had a highly salutary effect in keeping us on our toes editorially. We believe that the product will continue to speak for itself."

The New Yorker's departure from his fold was not a new experience for Editor Wallace. The Curtis Publishing Co. (Saturday Evening Post, Ladies' Home Journal, Country Gentleman) had once dropped out, then returned. So had others. A decade ago Editor Wallace began to supplement the Digest's reprint diet with a staff of original Digest authors which is now formidable. Noticeable in recent years: fewer Digest reprints from long-favored sources, more from lesser-known, smaller publications, and more original articles.